Fig. 4.

MR images in 88-year-old woman with invasive ductal carcinoma in her left breast.

Contrast-enhanced T1-weighted MR image (A), single-shot echo-planar image (ss-EPI) (B), and readout-segmented echo-planar image (rs-EPI) (C). rs-EPI provides superior anatomical detail and lesion delineation. Spatial distortion is more prominent on ss-EPI. Average scores given by three readers for overall image quality were 3 (acceptable) for ss-EPI and 5 (above average) for rs-EPI. Other variables are scored as follows (ss-EPI vs. rs-EPI); anatomical structure, 0 vs. 4.0; delineation of lesion, 4.3 vs. 6.0; ghosting artifacts, 2.7 vs. 4.0; fat suppression, 1.3 vs. 2.0; SNR, 126.5 vs. 556.9; contrast, 3.6 vs. 8.8; CNR, 6.3 vs. 15.4; ADC, 0.62 × 10^-3 mm²/sec vs. 0.63 × 10^-3 mm²/sec. ADC = apparent diffusion coefficient, CNR = contrast-to-noise ratio, SNR = signal-to-noise ratio